Event Comment: [
D$DuBellamy, as would appear from a letter to the Printer of the
Public Advertiser, 20 Sept. "Being at the Opera House last week to see the
Conscious Lovers and
As You Like It, not to mention the various and allowed excellencies of each performer, I was most agreeably surprized at the songs, in the bills said to be sung by a Gentleman, which indeed his genteel figure and polite address, at first sight well authenticated; but for the songs, viz.
If Love's a Sweet Passion,--
Blow, Blow Thou Winter's Wind,--with some others I must confess I never heard the like; his voice was finely masculine, strong, sweet, clear and articulate; his manner not servilely confined to the pedantic stiffness of some, or the affectation of others; in a word he sung like a Gentleman; and the sound, as
Milton elegantly expresses it, 'Floated the Wings of silence.' This is not intended (by doing justice to
Mr D. B@@y) to depreciate any....I am told he has applied to
Mr Beard, with what success I know not, [hopes he will be one of the new singers at
Covent Garden] signed
T. S."]